Opinion
The World Cup showed we still want to watch together
The next era of media will preserve the shared live moment while adapting how each person enters, understands, and participates in it.
A goal happens once. Millions of people may see it from different countries, in different languages, and on different screens, but they know they are reacting to the same event at the same time. That simultaneity is one of the few experiences the fragmented internet has not managed to replace.
The World Cup made that shared experience visible at enormous scale. Across the television services our teams supported during the tournament, viewers generated more than 1.3 billion playback sessions, with concurrent viewing peaking at around seven million sessions. These figures cover only those services, not the tournament’s entire global audience, but they still capture the reach of collective viewing around a major live event.
Most digital media has moved in the opposite direction. Viewers now choose when to watch, what to skip, and which recommendations to follow. On-demand platforms organize content around individual preferences and separate schedules. Live sport interrupts that pattern: the match begins at a fixed time, the decisive moments happen in one sequence, and the outcome is shared by everyone watching.
Product teams building the next generation of live media must decide where personalization belongs. The event itself should remain common: its timing, facts, score, sequence, and defining moments. The layers around it can adapt to the person watching.
A viewer joining in the 78th minute may need a quick recap of how the match reached that point. A new fan may need an explanation of the stakes, while an experienced viewer may want deeper statistics. One person may prefer translated commentary, and another may need captions. Discovery, accessibility, language, and context can all change without turning the event into a different reality for each viewer. Personalization widens participation when it helps more people enter and understand the shared experience.
AI can make the interface more responsive. A viewer should not always have to search through menus, scan an entire stream, or know the exact term required to find an answer. Systems can identify dialogue, people, scenes, and events inside video, then use that structure to help someone locate a moment, understand a rule, translate commentary, or generate a recap. AI can reduce the effort required to participate while leaving the common event intact.
Product teams must also decide what personalization is not allowed to change. A system may adapt the explanation, but it should not invent the fact. It may surface a relevant moment, but it should not rewrite the sequence. It may help a viewer understand what happened, but the answer still needs to be grounded in approved content, reliable sources, and clear permissions.
Those guardrails belong inside the product experience rather than being added as an administrative layer later. A responsive system must understand both the viewer’s intent and the limits of its authority: what it can explain, which source it can rely on, and which actions it cannot take. Without that discipline, personalization can become fast and impressive while making the underlying experience less trustworthy.
Product teams should not measure personalization by engagement alone. A feature that obscures the common timeline or leaves viewers with conflicting versions of what happened has failed, even if it increases clicks or watch time. An adaptive layer succeeds when it helps someone reach the same facts faster, follow the same decisive moments, and participate in the same conversation. Personalization earns its place when it lowers the barrier to the shared experience.
The same design choice applies anywhere people need different paths into the same trusted body of content, from learning environments to workplace knowledge. Live sport makes the requirement especially visible because the shared moment is part of the product’s social value, not just its content. The best live products will bring more people into the moment without breaking the moment apart.
Eynav “Navi” Azaria is Chief Product, Engineering, and Marketing Officer at Kaltura.
